Custom Beast

Well, as some of you know (I think nearly 30), Optimusdrizzt won my forever yes contest, thereby also winning a custom creation of his own. I had thrown up some random details on his forever yes contest, but thought I'd put something up here as well to be a little more thorough.

First step was ideas. I threw a pile of parts to Optimus and asked it he had any thoughts of his own.

Some torsos I was just holding over others to get a sense of what it might look like. I usually don't cut things up until I have a basic idea of where I want to put them.

At this point, Optimus put some of these up on his thread for opinions. Some suggested 3 heads (you monsters). Some suggested the penguin body (which was more original thought, but the proportions just felt wrong).

After measuring everything out, I was leaning towards the Ox body. It just felt right. I even liked the Ox arms as they matched the concept the most, which is something I don't often find (same arms and torso! nooooooo!). I asked Optimus his thoughts. He agreed and then it was off to the races.

Then I put it together and worked on the head. I removed the ears, which I hadn't yet thought to remove. The horns were tough and you can see in my pig pile I wasn't really certain what would work. I eventually used Bison horns for the head and the tips of some Russian horns for teeth (it was tough finding the right size and proportion). I had a few ideas for the head piece as well. I debated a horse head piece that would wrap around, but it felt like too much. I tried a few others, but they mostly felt blunt and didn't imitate the look very well. I finally settled on the Tortoise head topper, which is only in the center of the head, but felt like it established the look and gave me the best angles.

I put it a quick shot of the back to point out the tail. I just wanted to add a little curly cue tail.

All in all, I think it came out fairly well. It's not the most fantastical idea, but I tried to counteract that with some more technically challenging elements such as opening the mouth, adding the shoulder pads, and adding the little details such as the tail.

Nice! You definitely know your way around these guys. As If the mass thread filled with marvelous creations wasn't proof enough. I have dreams of a pig custom army but getting a single pig is hard enough.